After having a blast ripping and tearing my way through the atmospheric moonbases and metal-album-cover hellscapes of Doom 93 I was excited to keep the pain train rolling with Doom II.
Unfortunately most of the design choices that made the original work so well were lost in the wash when designing a sequel.
The tight 3 acts of the first doom are replaced with one long string of 32 levels, which doesn't work as well pacing wise imo, instead of letting the stakes build and wiping the slate clean you get stuck in this long slog of levels where a death means you are fucked because you should have the BFG by this point (and dying strips you of all of your weapons, something that was the case in Doom 1 but mattered less as the 9 level scenarios meant you accumulated supplies from scratch every few levels anyways)
Essentially, it just makes it so you have to rely on the quicksave feature a lot more, and save scum your way through the many (MANY) ambushes that WILL kill you unexpectedly, and also the many death pits that await (notably more than in the first game).
Also, prepare to have a walkthrough open if you want to get through this with your sanity in tact. In Doom 93, the level design made sense: if you needed a key, most of the time you could see where it was through a window or from some vantage point, signaling the direction to go. There is some gimmicky bs, but in Doom 2 I would get lost every level and just roam endlessly until giving in and looking up where to go, only to find the most esoteric solution to the puzzle. The worst offender is in the tenement level, where you get stuck roaming only to find out you need to bump into a specific skull decoration to open a door, a decoration that is not unique to this level and has never had this function in the past. Some real atrocious "level design 101" stuff not to do level gimmicks.
The story is about as deep as I expected, but switching up the setting and making a chunk of the action take place in a city was a cool call (even if the limitations of the time really just make the city levels a bunch of kind of boring blocks)
Despite these gripes, its not all bad: super shotgun truly rocks, so do the new monster designs, despite being very annoying. The revenant is scary as hell even in 2d, and the icon of sin is the definition of metal album cover inspired doom design. very sick. When you boil it down, blasting through demons with you shotgun is still as fun as ever, but some bad pacing and level design choices make this game notably less enjoyable than it's predecessor.
Unfortunately most of the design choices that made the original work so well were lost in the wash when designing a sequel.
The tight 3 acts of the first doom are replaced with one long string of 32 levels, which doesn't work as well pacing wise imo, instead of letting the stakes build and wiping the slate clean you get stuck in this long slog of levels where a death means you are fucked because you should have the BFG by this point (and dying strips you of all of your weapons, something that was the case in Doom 1 but mattered less as the 9 level scenarios meant you accumulated supplies from scratch every few levels anyways)
Essentially, it just makes it so you have to rely on the quicksave feature a lot more, and save scum your way through the many (MANY) ambushes that WILL kill you unexpectedly, and also the many death pits that await (notably more than in the first game).
Also, prepare to have a walkthrough open if you want to get through this with your sanity in tact. In Doom 93, the level design made sense: if you needed a key, most of the time you could see where it was through a window or from some vantage point, signaling the direction to go. There is some gimmicky bs, but in Doom 2 I would get lost every level and just roam endlessly until giving in and looking up where to go, only to find the most esoteric solution to the puzzle. The worst offender is in the tenement level, where you get stuck roaming only to find out you need to bump into a specific skull decoration to open a door, a decoration that is not unique to this level and has never had this function in the past. Some real atrocious "level design 101" stuff not to do level gimmicks.
The story is about as deep as I expected, but switching up the setting and making a chunk of the action take place in a city was a cool call (even if the limitations of the time really just make the city levels a bunch of kind of boring blocks)
Despite these gripes, its not all bad: super shotgun truly rocks, so do the new monster designs, despite being very annoying. The revenant is scary as hell even in 2d, and the icon of sin is the definition of metal album cover inspired doom design. very sick. When you boil it down, blasting through demons with you shotgun is still as fun as ever, but some bad pacing and level design choices make this game notably less enjoyable than it's predecessor.
Luxqaer
3 years ago